savetheearth | [closed] if we're not that gone then we're not that far

Entry tags:

[closed] if we're not that gone then we're not that far

Who: Lucas & Steven
When: May 31st, evening
Where: Stevens's apartment complex
What: Echos blow, let's decorate cakes instead.
Warnings: This will include flashbacks to vehicular manslaughter. Also, frosting dicks likely.

Steven's glad Lucas decided to text him, not call him - he'd been a shaky wreck for half an hour after crashing at home, he was pretty sure he still looked pale and sounded just as bad. When Lucas texts him that he's outside, he leaves the house looking less put-together than last time, tight khakis with paint stains across the left thigh and a loose plain blue t-shirt, his hair a little disheveled from when he'd been rolling around on his bed. He's bothered to put on worn-in Sperry's, at least.

The gate has a hand-latch, the kind that would be really easy to open from the opposite side if the gate were actually grated. Steven's been known to hop up on the wall and do just that from over it, when he doesn't want to walk around the front after hitting the convenience store, but he's not going to make a guest do that.

He swings the gate open, looking for Lucas, and lifts his hand hello when he finds him. He moves his mouth in up a little at the corners, but it's a little vague. "Hey," he says, stepping back to let Lucas through.

His apartment's the closest building to the gate, so it's just a matter of climbing the stairs to the third floor.

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Lucas blinks at Steven, whose artsy garb is kind of bowling him back with attraction. He swallows and lifts the bag with the cookie cake in it. He himself is dressed in a pair of school uniform slacks, and a typical teenager's sarcastic T-shirt. He wonders how Steven can make casual look so sexy. Then again, he looks pretty pale.

"Hey, hey. I got the cookie cake." He leans on Steven, encouragingly. "You look tired, man."

Steven shrugs, smacking at Lucas' body in his a companionable way. He looks cute in his after-school outfit, but young. Steven doesn't have much mind for that, anyway, as he leads down the sidewalk and over toward the stairwell.

"I'll go to bed early, I guess," he says, fingers jittering before he seems to notice it and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Thanks for coming." He looks sideways at Lucas, mouth lifting at one corner. "Sorry in advance for the apartment." It's not a huge mess, but he hadn't had the energy to clean up the supplies or clean laundry in his living room. He starts the walk up the stairs and makes it four steps before he turns back. "Did you want to take the elevator instead?" he asks, as it occurs to him. He doesn't usually bother, unless he's carrying something huge - it takes too long.

"Yeah, you should." He almost lifts his hand to pet Steven's head, but stops himself. A little weird, maybe.

"I'm sure it's fine! I don't mind." He's caused his share of trashed apartments. When Steven asks about the stairs, he cocks his head. "Nah, I'm fine. I mean, unless this apartment is twice as tall as I thought it was, I've got no problem with some stairs. Calm down, Steven."

Steven eyes Lucas, frowning a little. "Figured I should ask, just in case you had a delicate constitution," he grumbles, but it's only a little annoyed. He turns back to start up the stairs, moving with the easy sureness of familiarity. He's tense in the shoulders, easily discernible even with his hands in his pockets. He points, left, down the hallway, when they get up to the third floor.

"This way," he says, pointlessly given that he's already walking that way to the door that's his. He jiggles his key - three keys on a single keyring, with a pair of colorful superhero keychains, and one that's just laminated fanart of one of the charactes from his comic, easily visible since he has to wrestle with the lock for a minute - and finally pushes the door open. "Stupid thing," he says, "better than coming open all the time, but damn." He drops the keys in a dish by the door and kicks his shoes off as he passes into the living room.

His apartment is large enough, for a single-bedroom. The kitchen stretches on the right side, the living room on the left, and closed doors at the end, one for the bathroom, one for his bedroom. The living room is dominated by neatly marked boxes of comics in the corner next to the ironing board, and bookshelves. His desk - which he's been accessing the Network from, so it might be familiar - is in the other corner, his workspace stacked with reference books and cans of soda. It's not a particularly huge mess, just - very cluttered.

"End of the semester was rough," he says, as explanation. "Here, let me - " he turns, hands out, for the cookie cake bag.

He grins. "I'm fit as a fiddle." He follows Steven silently, watching him. Observing. He looks really tense and upset. Lucas bites his lip. He eyes the keychain, curiously.

"Did someone make that for you?" He says, pointing at the keychain in the dish. "That's cool."

The apartment is not nearly as messy as Lucas' room usually is. It looks lived-in, and in some way uniquely Steven. Being in the room is like being surrounded by Steven somehow. He feels comfortable. "Yeah, I bet finals are tough. Art stuff takes a long time, and everyone's assigning you stuff to do."

He hands over the bag. "So what kind of cool tricks are you going to show me with frosting?"

He takes the bag and talks as he rounds the corner into the kitchen, setting the bag down and sliding the cake out. "A fan gave it to me, for my first con after the comic got, like, any fans at all," he says, smiling fondly for just a moment. "I'm just glad it's survived this long. Sometimes they, uh, tear, if you're not careful." He says this with the sage feeling of experience.

"Finals wouldn't be so bad if half these projects weren't so dumb," he continues, sighing as he pops off the cake's plastic top and takes a look at the minimal frosting around the edge. "I'm not a sculptor. I don't want to be a sculptor. So why do I have to make physical pieces? I'm here to draw, or paint... Hell, I'd collage if it meant I could get out of 'make something using three objects and symbolism'."

He's already set out some of his frosting tools - not a ton, but a bag or two of colored frosting (green and purple) and some tips, and waves his fingers at them. "Depends on what you want to do," he says, and gestures to the stools at the island. "Sit. Did you want... dinner food?" He points his thumb at the fridge.

Lucas flicks it a little, amused. "Cool." He walks into the apartment, looking around. "That sucks. I mean, you're paying for it! So why are they teaching you dumb stuff you won't use."

He hops over to the kitchen and eyes the frosting bags excitedly. "Sure, but, later. Right now I wanna see you make a frosting rose, or like... I dunno, what can you make? A dick?" He laughs.

"A rounded art education," Steven says, his voice filled with as much contempt as he can summon up.

"A dick?" he asks, and laughs. Should he be surprised? No. Instead he reaches for the purple, and snaps in the frosting tip. The rose that he puts together with a few spins of his wrist is fairly small, but well put together. After a few seconds, he crafts a dick, too. "Both. Just for you." He rolls his eyes.

He smiles. "Well, even if I wasn't no good at art, I guess I know which kind of major I'm not going into." He sticks his tongue out, teasing.

He's thrilled. He grabs Steven's arm. "You're great at this!!" He grins, admiringly. "I mean, the dick is pretty good, but that flower is beautiful." Then he winks.

"Can you teach me how?"

"I'm not that good," he says, sloughing off the compliment, "but... thanks. I've been doing it a couple years, is all."

He raises his eyebrows. "Sure," he says, and slides the wax paper full of rose off the rose nail in his fingers. "Here," he says, and offers the frosting bag open-end first. He reaches around for a wax paper. "Squeeze a little on that," he says, offering the flat top of the rose nail at Lucas. "Just so the paper'll stick," he says, and waits so he can slap the paper on and hand Lucas the actual stick end.

He picks up the wax paper with the rose on it and licks it off. Not like he's trying to be sexy, kind of like a kid licking the cookie dough spoon. It's an offhand act.

He imitates the way that Steven held the bag, and manages to get a little frosting right onto the rose nail. Maybe a biiit too much, but it's his first time. "There."

Steven doesn't stare, carefully avoiding looking. It's not really - sexy, and especially not in the carefully-crafted way he's begun associating with Lucas in his head. It's just... distracting. (Belatedly, it occurs to him this is the setup for a romance movie. Again.)

"All right," he says, making sure the paper is settled before he hands Lucas the rose nail's stick. "You're starting with a little cone," he says, "right in the middle."

He nods and holds the rose nail, scrunching up his face with concentration. He manages a kind of wobbly cone, spinning the nail like Steven did, but considerably slower. "Okay, how's that?"

"Not bad for a start," Steven says, leaning over to adjust Lucas' grip. Professionally. There's a certain clinical air to him as his fingers brush Lucas', but then his brain catches up and he pulls away. "Anyway," he says, "be careful and start making petals while you spin it. Go slow and don't squeeze too hard or it'll end up lopsided. He picks up the other frosting bag and holds it between his palms, for something to do.

The touch doesn't escape him, and neither does the pullback, like he's burned. He bites his lip, just a little bit pleased. "Got it." He starts, making some of the early petals kind of weird-looking. But it evens out at the end, so by the time his rose has been built up, it looks pretty rose-like.

He grins. "Check it out!" He holds it up. "Not bad, if I may say so myself."

Steven leans over to look at it. "Not bad," he says, approving, "especially for a first try. Hold it still." He lifts the frosting bag to ice a couple of leaves. "There," he says, when he's done, and straightens up.

He feels really pleased to be getting any level of acknowledgement at all from Steven. "Thanks! Now how do I get it off the thing and onto the cookie cake?" He purses his lips and eyes the cookie cake.

"It's called wax paper," Steven says, with an eye roll. "We give it a couple minutes to harden and then transfer it. Most of the time for a cookie cake you'd do a sideways rose - " He pauses to demonstrate with the frosting in his hands, which meant a green rose shape not far from the dick. "Since it's a pain in the ass to put together one from the top without turning the whole dish. That's why most of the time you see, like, balloons or just normal borders."

He holds onto it, as he watches Steven make the rose. "Oh, I guess so. I like the way this one looks a little better, anyway."

He gives a cheeky little smile. "You know, I never thought I'd be learning about stuff like this, but it's pretty cool."

Steven nods agreeably. "The top-view ones are nicer, but obviously they take a little time to set, and they're a lot more frosting. So side-view's got its advantages."

He laughs, beginning to absent-mindedly border the cookie cake with the frosting. "I started doing it in high school for a job, and now I teach classes, so I just call it 'rent money'," he says, "but it's fun. Relaxing, not like my regular art. Once you learn how to do something, you can do it whenever as long as you're careful, you know? And it tastes good."

He spins the rose in his hand, idly. "So do you ever bake the cakes or do you just decorate them? I guess it's easy enough to get ahold of a blank cake..."

He grins. "I bet you're the life of every party you go to, huh? Being the guy who brings the cake."

"I don't bake as much any more now that I'm not working in a grocery store," Steven says, still bordering. "Usually I teach cake decoration on plastic cake models so I can just wipe them down for another class, but I bake sometimes."

He looks up, smiling a little. "I'm not exactly a party guy," he says, "but whenever I bring a cake I decorated people seem way happier to see me."

Edited (too smile-y put that away steven) 2014-06-07 06:56 (UTC)

"Baking is kind of fun. I'm no good at it, but I used to do it for my mom and dad sometimes, on special occasions." Well, once for his dad, before the reaction his father had to a cake baked by his son shifted his desire away from baking for a while. It wasn't even a bad reaction, just a subtle shift of his face, a mild grimace. Lucas had grown so sensitive to it.

"I'd be happy to see you, cake or no." He says, cheeky, chin in hands as he watches the pattern rise up around the cookie cake.

"The next time there's an occasion, I'll give you a hand," Steven offers, casual. "Birthdays, or whatever, I'm good at decorating for parents." He finishes half of the border, a simple bead pattern, and sets down the frosting.

He's bashful as he points to the other bag. "Thanks," he says, voice just a little dry with disbelief. "It's your turn, come here and try it." He shifts his finger to the border. "It's even easier than the rose was, I swear."

"Yeah? That sounds great. Maybe when my mom finishes her latest restoration project we can make her a cake that looks like it!" He chuckles. "Er, though that might be a bit much."

"Oh, me too? Okay. It's gonna look weird and lumpy, just gotta warn you." He takes the bag up and leans down, trying to squeeze the bag into the correct pattern. At first it comes out weirdly unruffled, and he frowns, not quite sure how to squeeze the bag to make it look right.

Steven makes a face. "Depends on how complicated the art is," he muses, sliding his knuckle across his chin. "I probably can't put the Mona Lisa on a cake."

He waits, watching Lucas' hands, and sees the problem immediately. "You have to, uh, pulse a little," he says, and slides over, next to him, to adjust Lucas' grip, his hands firm on Lucas' fingers. He squeezes the frosting bag so it pushes some out out, and loosens his hand, pushing the bag forward a little and then rocking it back to form an approximation of the shell pattern he'd started. Then he repeats the process, before pulling slowly back. "Like that," he says, and clears his throat. They're close enough to touch, but he doesn't shift away yet.

"She's been doing restoration cleanup stuff on some more impressionisty stuff, lately. It all looks like blobs to me, though. Her photos are way too close up." He shrugs.

But then Steven is around him, and he kind of hears his heart beating in his ears. Man, Steven can't be blind to the tension between them... He's barely able to concentrate on the shell pattern as Steven guides his hand.

He looks up as Steven pulls back, but still hovers around him. He meets Steven's eyes without saying anything, just giving him a silent, desperate stare.

Steven tries to say something about blobs on cakes being kind of not great for decoration, but Lucas is... staring at him. He stares back, for long seconds, and too late backs off, rounding the island in the least subtle moment of rejection he's literally ever offered, ever. He clears his throat, again, and leans on the counter.

"Um," he says, trying to carry on. "Uh, impressionist stuff's a little tough to put on a cake. I could... watercolor style one, maybe." Jesus, he's fucked this right up. His heart's beating fast, but he ignores it. Lucas is too young and too desperate. He can't do this. All of a sudden, he's regretting his desire for company, bad memories or not. His eyes flicker down at the cake, and he grimaces. "Shit, the bag's - leaking," he says, and reaches out to adjust the tip, just to pull back before they actually touch.

Edited 2014-06-07 08:08 (UTC)

He flushes, a little in embarrassment and a little in shame. He wants to apologize, but his heart is breaking, just a little bit. He coughs, just so that he doesn't have to cry.

"Huh?" He wipes his face. "Oh, yeah. Well, I mean. We could always go the printed design route, really. You don't even have to help out, if you don't want to." He lets Steven adjust the bag, then swallows and starts to pipe slightly shaky borders out onto the cookie. "Better? Right?"

He licks his lips. "Um, anyhow, sorry about making you... teach me stuff, when you're having a bad day. If you wanted to talk about it, I'm cool with that. Either way." He shrugs, trying to affect nonchalance, though he is suddenly feeling like going home and crying.

Steven feels abruptly terrible, for making Lucas look like that, but he'd rather not feed the flames. "I said I'd help," he says, "and I'll even do it for free, which is a one-time offer." He nods at Lucas' cake-decorating skills, and then shrugs a little.

"It got my mind off it a little," he says. Then he snaps, like something's occurred to him. "Oh, shit, wait one sec -" he breaks away from the island to go to his desk, and comes back with... a cell phone and a camera. He sets them on the counter away from the food. "These were on the bed when I came home," he says, flipping the phone open and pushing in the USB stick half-sticking out of the base. "Stag! Bat!" The phone goes bug-like, like the stag beetle it is, and buzzes around Lucas' head. The bat camera is second; it snaps several pictures of the kitchen, complete with flash.

"Hey," Steven says, when he gets light in his eyes, "cut it - out!" He reaches out to catch the damn thing, and of course the flash stops immediately when he gets his hand on it.

He thinks he might want to talk about the memory of the man, and the car, but not right this second.

"Okay... Thanks." His voice is too thick for it to not be obvious how he's feeling. He clears his throat, running his fingers through his hair.

"Huh?" He watches him come back from the desk with the two little robotic creatures, and looks around in wonder as they flutter around his head. He puts his hand over his face to block the camera. "Whoa, no paparazzi!!" he laughs, though he's still down in the dumps.

"What about delicate artists?" Steven asks, and holds the camera up. He half-smiles, which is about all he can manage at the moment, and reaches up to pluck the Stag Phone out of the air.

"Not really sure why they showed up," he says, as he looks them over, "but they're definitely not regular Earth stuff. Kind of hurt to lie down on, too." The last is a little sheepish. He'd thrown himself on his bed without looking and regretted it.

"Do you... want something to drink, or something? I can turn on the TV and we can, I don't know, watch Hoarders or something?" Something, anything, to turn their mutually feedbacking bad moods up, just a little. Or even just have a distraction.

He's smiling at Steven, one of his usual put-on smiles instead of the real ones he's been showing Steven lately. And then he's hit with the hollow echo feeling... A memory of his familiarity with those items. A memory of a photo taken with that camera, a feeling of pure sentiment, of family. With Philip and Shotaro, and a girl he doesn't know the name of, but who is as familiar to him as his sisters are now.

And he can't help it, even though he wanted to show a good face, even though he's good at controlling his emotions... At least for a 16-year-old... He breaks into tears, they fall past his still-pasted-on smile and he gives a short, sharp sob.

His voice goes shrill as he insists, "It's nothing, don't worry, I'm sorry!"

Steven winces. "Ah," he says, and drops the phone and the camera, hurrying around. "What happened--?" An Echo, of course, but what kind, to kill his composure this quickly? "Don't - shit - don't cry - oh, god, look, sit down..." He guides him by the shoulders pointedly toward the couch and makes him sit, settles down next to him. Close enough to touch but far enough that it's, hopefully, not too much.

"Nothing, I'm sorry, it's just an echo and..." He takes a deep breath, trying to get ahold of himself as Steven leads him to the couch. "It's just... an echo... I shouldn't be crying."

He wipes his face with both hands, like a kid, though his tears are still falling. "It's just..." He looks at Steven next to him, so close but still so far away. "...every time... The more I know what it was like to be Philip... The more I miss... I miss being close to you, and then that girl..."

He buries his head in his hands. "I'm just screwing it up this time, I'm not like Philip..." He breathes a couple of times, deep, heavy. "I just want..." He breaks off, not sure what to say, how to convey the hollow loneliness that reverberates inside him in the aftermath of that warm, family-like echo. Even his real family has never connected with him in that way.

"It's fine," Steven says, flustered by tears nonetheless. He's handled his sisters for years, he can... do this. Right?

He breathes in, then out, long, and leans his forearms on his knees. "I'm not Shotaro," he says, as gently as he can. "I'm not him, and I don't want to be. His life was... not what I want for myself. I'm Steven, not Shotaro, so..."

There's no gentle way to say it. "So you can't confuse me for him. Philip was close to Shotaro. Shotaro was close to Philip, too, I can feel it, I feel it every time you're around. He cared... about him. And I... I like you. I think we're friends. You're a good guy, and you're not... screwing it up. Especially not by not being Philip," and he's intense, on that point, vehement that Lucas not define himself by the benchmark of the weird boy in his memory. "But we're not them."

And I don't want to be, he doesn't say, but he feels like it's probably there, heavy in the air.

He listens, tears still falling from his eyes. The difference between Steven and Shotaro is clear enough to him, despite how little he really does remember about Shotaro. It's hard to separate the feelings Philip had for Shotaro from his own feelings for Steven... But there are definite differences.

And to be honest, his fairly recent memory of Philip that seemed to be his and Shotaro's first meeting... has unsettled him about Philip, just a bit. Philip's feelings about Shotaro in the later memory were strong... so strong... But that strength was the flip side of the nothing he felt about anything the moment they first met. Philip seemed almost completely hollow at that moment, the demon he named himself as.

His tears taper off for a moment. "Yeah, no... I'm sorry. I know... You're not Shotaro. I'm... not Philip." He smiles, weak and watery. "I just..." He trails off, knowing without his having to say it that Steven is aware that Lucas has some kind of feelings for him. Whether it's because of Philip's feelings for Shotaro, or because Steven himself is kind, mature, talented, cute, and so beyond him... Even he doesn't know. It seems so strangely perfect, like destiny, on paper. But real life is never that easy. He's known that since he was barely old enough to realize why his dad gave him those looks.

"I guess I'm really crying just because... when I felt that feeling between the three of them it made me realize..." He squeezes his fists on his knees, bent over like he's just run a mile, feeling the tears still there in his chest. He whispers, "...how lonely I am." It goes against his every instinct to admit that weakness in front of somebody. If anyone really knew how lonely he was, it could easily be exploited. He has people he considers friends, but he still keeps them at arm's length, doesn't tell them much about his inner life.

But for him, Steven seems... safe. Hell, if he had been Steven, he probably would already have taken advantage of himself. Steven has a lifetime of opportunities to use him, to manipulate him... He knows one thing that he and Philip share in common about the way they perceive their partners, even beyond the crush and the memories... Both he and Philip look on their respective partners as morally upright. Better than. Fundamentally good, in comparison to themselves. His assessment is quietly strengthened by Steven's gentleness, especially considering his obvious dismay at being perceived as the same as his alter ego.

Steven swallows, uncertain. He's never really felt lonely in the way that Lucas is. He doesn't have to hide, doesn't really feel rejected, least of all by his own parents. Since Sam left, he's understood loneliness more keenly - it's hard to break up while you're living in a new city - but he wasn't alone, when any of that was happening, not really.

He lifts his hand and puts it carefully on Lucas' back, high. He's not sure what to say, but he's not going to sit here and let him suffer by himself. He looks sideways at him. "You're not by yourself," he says. "I know you feel that way. And we're not... family. But I'm here, all right, Lucas?" Maybe he's promising too much. Maybe this is a mistake. But it doesn't feel like a mistake. There's a tightness in his chest he ignores. "I already know too much. You can't get rid of me," he says, more cheerfully. He taps his fingertips on Lucas' back.

Lucas sniffles, nodding. "I just..." He knows Steven knows that his feelings for him aren't entirely innocent. He knows that Steven clearly doesn't feel the same way, or if he does, he doesn't want to. Which is really just as bad, if not worse, to Lucas. Probably what he meant when he said 'we're not family.' It does burn a little. It hurts. Lucas feels a nauseousness rise in his stomach at the tacit rejection.

Still... It's true that the two of them are bound together by fate, at least in some way. And even if Steven can't or won't love him... At least when he's with Steven, he's not alone. He can't fathom ignoring or dismissing his feelings... He is, after all, just sixteen. But he's been dealing with crushes on unavailable guys for his whole life. He'll just have to keep dealing.

He squeezes his knees. "Sorry, it's... a pretty ridiculous reason to cry. Kind of cruel, too, to cry about being lonely when someone's right here." He chuckles. "I don't think I could get rid of you even if you didn't know anything. We're partners, after all." Exactly what sort of partners, he wasn't sure, but the surety in the solid concept of partnership between them is one thing that resonates through all of Lucas' memories.

He sighs. "I'm sorry if I, uh... made you feel uncomfortable back there. I'm... kind of a mess. Even I know it. You promised you won't run, so I better promise I'll try not to... make you feel like that." He avoids Steven's gaze. Maybe it would be easier to be Philip and not care.

Steven's hand tightens in the fabric of Lucas' shirt, and his jaw tightens as he looks down on Lucas. He lets go of his shirt to mess with his hair, companionably, and pulls his hand slowly back into his lap, his hands tangled together and dangling between his knees. "Don't worry about it," he says, "I'm here until the end, partner. Whatever that is."

He looks down. "It's not ridiculous. We've all got... stuff that's tough to deal with." Not his most brilliant observation, but whatever. "I'm still screwed up over a memory that isn't even mine, I'm in no position to talk."

He leans back, against the couch back, his eyes tipped up toward his white spackled ceiling. "Don't think you've got to be the guy you are at school or at home around here," he says, "you do it to protect yourself, so... you're safe here. All right?" He turns his head sideways to look at Lucas. He's not great at expressing stuff like this, but he's got to try.

He swallows, feeling the warmth of the hand on him. What he says sounds like something Shotaro might have said, but for better or worse it doesn't trigger anything. "Yeah. Okay. I'm... I'm here for you, too." He just wants to sit here, feeling Steven's hand on his head, for the rest of the night.

But of course that can't happen. Steven's hands are his own. He looks over. "I... I guess. I'm not really helping with that, either, am I?" He swallows. "You can tell me about it, if you want. I promise I won't cry again."

He nods, taking that in, meeting Steven's gaze. "Okay. I mean... Forgive me if I... act fake, okay? Sometimes it's hard to tell when I'm being real and when I'm not." He's been putting on acts for so long in his life that he's kind of lost contact with his true self.

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[closed] if we're not that gone then we're not that far

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you just wanted to link that t-shirt

Nooo I sought out that tshirt by googling sarcastic tshirts for teens

i guess i believe you

u better

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